Ragnatrix
by HiddyArmy
Summary: What would you do if your world was turned upside down? Nothing is what it seems and no one can be trusted. The fate of the nine realms in the hands of one god. Enter the Matrix. DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN THE MATRIX, THE AVENGERS OR ANY OF THE CHARACTERS.
1. Your Men Are Dead

A blinking cursor pulsed in the electric darkness, burning beneath the derma of black-neon glass.

A phone began to ring, distracting Loki temporarily. The cursor continued to throb, relentlessly patient, until...

"Hello?"

Data slashed across the screen, information flashing faster than he could read.

"I'm inside, Barton. Anything to report?"

"Let's see. Target left work at 5:01 PM..."

The entire screen filled with racing columns of numbers, shimmering like green-electric rivets, they rush at a 10-digit phone number in the top corner.

"He caught the northbound Howard line. Got off at Sheridan. Stopped at 7-11. Purchased six-pack of beer and a box of Captain Crunch. Returned home."

The area code was identified by Loki as he listened. The first three numbers suddenly fixed, leaving only seven flowing columns. Each digit is matched, one by one, snapping into place like the wheels of a slot machine.

"All right, you're relieved. Use the usual exit."

Barton's voice sounded tired. "Do you know when we're going to make contact?"

"Soon..."

Only two thin digits left.

"Just between you and me, you don't believe it, do you? You don't believe your brother is the one?"

Loki got annoyed at yet again the same question. "I think Heimdall believes he is."

"I know. But what about you?"

"I think Heimdall knows things that I don't."

Annoyance is clear in their voices. "Yeah, but if he's wrong..."

The final number pops into place.

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

Loki looked at the screen. Trace complete. Call origin: #312-555-0690. "Are you sure this line is clean?"

"Yeah, course I'm sure."

"I better go."

"Yeah. Right. See you on the other side."

He hung up. The growing sound of police radio all around started to unnerve him.

The hotel Loki found himself in was abandoned after a fire licked its way across the polyester carpeting, destroying several rooms as it spooled soot up the walls and ceiling leaving patterns of permanent shadow. Four armed police officers crept down the blackened hall and readied themselves on either side of the door, where a frightened god awaited on the other side.

They kicked down the door and pointed their guns at Loki, who was still sitting in front of the screen, dressed in black leather and hands slightly twitching.

"Hands behind your head! Now! Do it!"

Nervously, he slowly put his hands behind his head.

Outside the building, two dark elves from Svartalfheim approached the officers. They never removed their masks in public. Never. "You were given specific orders..."

The officer didn't seem impressed. They were used to dealing with dark elves, it was natural to all governments ever since the failed battles of NY and the Ether years ago. "I'm just doing my job. I sent two units. They're bringing him down now."

"Your men are dead."


	2. The Next Target

They cops have done this a hundred times, they know they've got her, until one of them reached with the handcuff and Loki moved.

It almost didn't register, so smooth and fast, inhumanly fast. The eye blinked and Loki's palm snapped up, blood erupting from the nose. The cop died before he began to fall. And Loki was moving again...

Seizing a wrist, misdirecting a gun as a startled cop fired. In blind panic, another aired their gun, the barrel, a fixed black hole... and fired. Loki twisted out of the way, the bullet missing as he reversed into a roundhouse kick, knocking the gun away.

The cop began to scream when a jump kick crushed their windpipes, killing the scream as they falls to the ground.

He looks at the four bodies. "Shit."

One dark elf entered the hotel, while the other headed for an alley. Loki was on the phone again, pacing anxiously until the other end answered.

"Operator."

"Heimdall! The link was traced! I don't know how."

"I know. Stay calm."

"Are there any dark elves?"

"Yes."

"Goddamnit!"

"You have to focus. There is a portal. Wells and Laxe. You can make it."

He took a deep breath, centering herself. "All right..."

"Go."

He dropped the phone and bursted out of the room as a dark elf entered the hall, leading another unit of police. Loki raced to the opposite end, exiting through a broken window onto the fire escape. In the alley below, he saw the other dark elf staring at him. He could only go up.

As he got to the roof, he ran as the elf rose over the parapet, leading the cops in pursuit. How he wish he still had his magic. How he wish his magic had been real. He jumped from one roof to the next, his moverents so clean, gliding in and out of each jump, contrasted to the wild jumps of the cops. The elf, however, had the same unnatural grace.

They raced for the back of the building. The edge fell away into a wide back alley. The next building was over 40 feet away, but Loki face was perfectly calm, staring at some point beyond the other roof. The cops slowed, realizing they were about to see something ugly as the former god drove at the edge, launching himself into the air.

From above, the ground seemed to flow beneath him as he hung in flight, then hitting, somersaulting up, still running hard.

The cops stared, slack-jawed, as the elf duplicated the move exactly, landing, rolling over a shoulder, up onto one knee. "Motherfucker... that's impossible!"

Just below the building were the runbling tracks of riveted steel. A train screeched beneath him, a rattling blur of gray metal. The elf stood, yanking out a gun. Bullets whistled past Loki's head as he ran to another edge. His only chance lied 50 feet beyond where a train had begung to turn. And then he saw a window, a yellow glow in the midst of a dark brick building. He breathed in on it, running as hard as he could, his speed compounded by the train. The scream of the steel rose as he neared the edge where the train rocked into the turn. Loki hurtled into the empty night space, his body leveling into a dive. He fell, arms covering his head as the whole world seems to spin on its axis, and crashed with an explosion of glass and wood, then fell onto a back stairwell, tumbling, bouncing down stairs bleeding, broken alive.

Through the smashed window, he glimpsed the elf, still on the train, his tie and coat whipping in the wind. Stone-faced, he touched his ear piece as the train slid him past the window.

Loki tried to move. Everything hurt. Talking to himself now seemed like a good way to get motivated. "Get up, Loki. You're fine. Get up... just get up!" And so he stood and limped down the rest of the stairs. When he emerged from the shadows, at the end of the block, in a pool of white street light, he felt it. The portal. He could see it now, opened inconveniently in the middle of the sidewalk.

Obviously hurt, he walked down the concrete sidewalk, focusing in completely, his pace quickening, as the portal got nearer and brighter.

Across the street, a garbage truck suddenly u-turned, its tires screaming as it accelerated. Loki saw the headlights on the truck arcing at the portal as if taking aim.

Gritting through the pain, he raced the truck, running right nto the portal as the headlights, blindingly bright, beared down on him.

And then, there is silence.

After a moment, a black loafer stepped down from the cab of the garbage truck. The tallest elf inspected the sidewalk. There was no body. Loki was gone.

"Did you get anything from the room?"

"Their next target. The name is Thor. An old friend of his."


	3. Knock, Knock, Thor

Every since the wars, Thor had to learn how to live as a human. His godhood was gone, not forever but when it would be back, he didn't know. He now owned a computer, and since he could no longer smash through anything, he had to content himself to spending hours a day surfing the web and daydreaming what life used to be. Today, exceptionally, he was in an online chat.

_**JACKON:**_ _ I heard Loki has been on this board._

_**SUPERASTIC: **__Loki doesn't even exist and the Matrix is nothing but an advertising gimmick 4 a new game. _

_**TIMAXE: **__I just want to know whether Loki is a boy or a girl. Writes like a girl._

_**LODII: **__87% of all women online are really men, so I guess it's a man. I'm sure it's just some lunatic adopting the same name as the alien war criminal. The government is not even after him anymore._

_**QUARK: **__The Matrix is an euphemism for the government. _

_**SUPERASTIC: **__No, The Matrix is the system controlling our lives._

_**TIMAXE: **__You mean MTV._

_**SUPERASTIC: **__I mean Sega._

_**FOS4: **__ALL HAIL SEGA!_

Thor's apartment was a nothing but a studio, overgrown with technology. The dim witter god of thunder was long gone, what was left of him was something different, far more intellectual than he used to be.

Weed-like cables coil everywhere, duct-taped into thickets that wind up and around the legs of several desks, tabletops filled with cannibalized equipment that lay open like an autopsied corpse. Nowadays, Thor knew more about living inside a computer than living outside one.

He took one glance at the screen and it was enough to spoil his mood. "Fuckin' idiots don't know shit...". He finished his cereal and was about to disconnect when an anonymous message sliced onto the screen.

_**Anonymous: **__Do you want to know what the Matrix is, Thor?_

Thor froze when he read his name.

_**SUPERASTIC: **__Who said that?_

_**JACKON: **__Who's Thor? _ _Isn't that the criminal's brother's name?_

_**GIBSON: **__This is a private board. _

_**Anonymous: **__If you want to know, follow the white rabbit. _

_**THOR: **__What the hell..._

_**TIMAXE: **__Someone is hacking the hackers!_

_**FOS4: **__It must be Loki!_

_**JACKON: **__Identify yourself. _

_**Anonymous: **__Knock knock, Thor. _

A chill ran down his spine and when someone knocked on his door he almost jumped out of his chair. He looked at the door, then back at the computer but the message was gone. He shook his head, not completely sure what happened. Again, someone knocks.

Cautiously, Thor approached the door.

_"Hey, Thunder-boy! You in there?"_

Recognizing the voice, he relaxed a bit and opened it. It was Anthony, a man who lived down the hall and knew who the ex-god used to be, or thought he knew. He was standing outside with a group of friends.

"What do you want, Anthony?"

He held up the red notice that accompanied the Denver boot. "I need your help, man. Desperate. They got me, man. The shackles of fascism."

"You got the money this time?"

He held up two hundred dollars and Thor opened the door.

Anthony's girlfriend, Dujour, stopped in front of the thunderer. "You can really get that thing off, right now?"

Anthony smirked. "I told you, honey, he may look like just another mortal, but this guy here used to be a god of thunder, he's all we got left standing between Big Brother and the New World Order."

Outside, a police officer unlocked a yellow metal boot from the wheel of an enormous oldsmobile. They watched from the window as the cops, silently, robotically, climbed into their van.

Anthony scoffed. "Look at 'em. Automatons. Don't think about what they're doing or why. Computer tells 'em what to do and they do it. The banality of evil." He slapped the money in Thor's hand. "Thanks, neighbor. Why don't you come to the party with us?"

Thor didn't want to be rude, but parties were definitely not in his plans. "I don't know. I have to work tomorrow."

"Come on. It'll be fun." Dujour insisted.

He looked up at her and suddenly noticed on her black leather motorcycle jacket dozens of pins: bands, symbols, slogans, military medals and... A small white rabbit.

"Yeah, yeah. Sure, I'll go."


	4. Never Forgotten

At an older apartment, a series of halls connected a chain of small high-ceilinged rooms lined with heavy casements. Smoke hanged like a veil, blurring the few lights there were. Dressed predominantly in black, people were everywhere, gathered in cliques around pieces of furniture like jungle cats around a tree.

Thor stood against a wall, alone, sipping from a bottle of beer, feeling completely out of place, he was about leave when he noticed a man staring at him.

His brother Loki. He couldn't believe his eyes for the first few moments. It's been years and now Loki was walking straight up to him.

With his heart beating louder than the industrial music, Loki stepped closer to his brother. "Hello, Thor."

"Loki... How did you know were to find me?" Wasn't what he planned to say at all.

"I know a lot about your new life. I've been wanting to see you again for some time."

"It's been years, Loki... " _And I missed you_, he wanted to say. But the distance between him and his brother seemed to have increased over the years. "Was it you who cracked the I.R.S. Kansas City D-Base?"

In older times, he would've been surprised at Thor's new found knowledge. "That was a long time ago."

"Some people online think you're a girl."

"Everyone on Asgard called me one and you didn't mind."

Thor got a little embarrassed. "Do you want to go sorewhere and talk?" He wanted to do more than talk, but he figured it would be too soon, too awkward.

"No. It's safe here and I don't have much time." As much as it pained Loki, he would have to leave again. The music was so loud they ended up standing very close, talking directly into each other's ear.

"That was you on the board tonight. That was your note, wasn't it?" He found it hard to breathe. How he longed to smell that perfume again..

"I had to gamble that you would see and they wouldn't." Loki's own breathing was getting laboured.

His eyes were closed now. "Who wouldn't?"

Loki's lips brushed lightly over Thor's. "I can't explain everything to you. I'm sure that it's all going to seem very strange, but I brought you here to warn you, brother. You are in a lot of danger."

Thor's eyes shot open. "What? Why?"

Loki seemed emotionaly hurt. " They're watching you. Something hapened and they found out about you. Normally, if our target is exposed we let it go. But this time, we can't do that."

"I don't understand..."

"You came here because you wanted to know the answer."

"The Matrix. What is the Matrix?"

Loki's eyes were locked on his brother's. "Twelve years ago, after you and I..." He sighed. It was always hard to remember. "I found Heimdall again... He said that no one could be told the answer to that question. That they had to see it, to believe it." His body was against Thor's and his lips very close to the thunderer's ear. "He told me that no one should look for the answer unless they have to because once you see it, everything changes. Your life and the world you live in will never be the same. It's as if you wake up one morning and the sky is falling."

Loki had a hypnotic quality to his voice and Thor felt the words, like a drug, seeping into him.

"The truth is out there, Thor. It's looking for you and it'll find you, if you want it to." He took hold of Thor with his eyes. "That's all I can tell you right now. Good-bye, brother... And good luck."

Suddenly Thor fell into a state of desperation. He couldn't lose Loki again. When the trickster leant closer and whispered "I never forgot you... Never..." Thor felt like crying.

Loki turned around and melted into the shifting wall of bodies, leaving a crying ex-god standing alone and remembering a past he struggled to forget.


	5. They're Coming For You

The annoying sound of an alarm clock drags Thor out of his nostalgic wet. He strained to read the clock face:

9:15 A.M.

"Shit!"

* * *

The office of CorTechs, a software development company, was not a nice place to work. The main offices were along each wall, the windows overlooking downtown. Any toe stepped out of line was rewarded with lectures and scolding. And on that cloudy morning, Rhineheart, the ultimate company man, decided to lecture Thor for being late yet again. It didn't matter to him at all that Thor saved New York from a chitauri disaster in the past. Who cares, right?

"You have a problem, Mr. Odinson. You think that you're special. You believe that somehow the rules do not apply to you. Obviously, you are mistaken." His bony fingers resumed clicking the keyboard. "This company is one of the top software companies in the world because every single employee understands that they are a part of a whole. Thus, if an employee has a problem, the company has a problem."

Thor dared to roll his eyes. When he was a teenager, being lectured like this would result in a hammer smashing. But he was no longer a teen, and he no longer had a hammer.

"The time has come to make a choice, Mr. Odinson. Either you choose to be at your desk on time from this day forth, or you choose to find yourself another job. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Mr. Rhineheart. Perfectly clear."

* * *

The entire floor looked like a human honeycomb, with a labyrinth of cubicles structured around a core of elevators. Thor slumpped down into his chair. A tall employee stood up in the adjacent cubicle, leaning over the partition.

"What did he say?"

"If I was late again, I'm going to be fired."

The employee smirks. "Well, it was nice working with you."

Thor glared at him as he sank down.

"Thor Odinson?"

He turned around and found a FEDEX man at his cubicle door. "Yeah. That's me."

He signed the electronic pad and the Fedex guy handed him a softpack. "Have a nice day, Mr. Odinson."

He opened the bag. Inside was a cellphone. It seemed that the instant it was in his hand, it rang. Unnerved, he pressed the green button. "Hello?"

"Hello, Thor. This is Heimdall."

Thor's knees gave and he fell into his chair.

"I had hoped for this conversation to take place under less adverse conditions, but you can never count on hope, can you, my prince?"

"... no."

"I've been watching you, and I want to see you again. I don't know if you're ready to see what I want to show you, but unfortunately, we have run out of time in Asgard. They're coming for you, Thor. And I'm not sure what they're going to do."

"Who's coming for me?"

"Stand up and see for yourself."

"Right now?"

"Yes. Now."

Slowly, he started to stand.

"The elevator."

His head slowly peeked up over the partition. At the elevator, he saw two dark elves leading a group of cops. A female employee turned and pointed out Thor's cubicle, making the thunderer hide again. "Holy fuckin' shit!"

"Yes."

One cop stood at the elevator, the others followed the elves.

Thor was beginning to sweat. Heimdall had been a good friend and guardian all his life, but this was not what he expected from talking to his old friend again. "What the fuck do they want with me?!"

"I'm not sure. But, if you don't want to find out, you better get out of there."

"How?!"

"I can guide you out, but you have to do exactly what I say."

The elves were moving quickly towards the cubicle.

"The cubicle across from you is empty."

"But what if...?"

"Go! Now!"

Thor lunged across the hall, diving into the other cubicle just as the elves and the cops turned into his row. He hid into a dark corner, clutching the phone tightly to him. This was starting to take its toll on him. Sometimes he wished life was a dream he could wake up from.

"Stay here for a moment."

The elves entered the empty cubicle. A cop was sent to search the bathroom.

Heimdall's voice was a whisper in Thor's ear. "A little longer... When I tell you, go to the end of the row to the first office on the left, stay as low as you can."

Sweat trickled down his forehead.

"Now."

He rolled out of the cubicle, his eyes popping as he freezed right behind a cop who had just turned around. Staying crouched, he sneaked away, down the row, shooting across the opening to the first office on the left. The room was empty.

"Good. Now there is a window. Open it."

"Have you been keeping an eye on me all along?"

Heimdall laughed quietly. "The answer is coming, Thor."

He opened the window. The wind howled into the room.

"Outside, there's a scaffold. You can use it to get to the roof."

Leaning out the window, he saw that the scaffold was several offices away. "No! It's too far away."

"There's a small ledge. It's a short climb. You can make it."

Thor looked down. The building's glass wall vertigos into a concrete chasm. "No way, no way, this is crazy!"

"Don't be controlled by your fear, Thor. There are only two ways out of this building. One is that scaffold. The other is in their custody. You take a chance either way. I leave it to you."

_*click* _Heimdall hung up.

He looke at the door, then back at the scaffold. "This is insane! Why is this happening to me? What did I do? I'm not even a fucking god anymore. I didn't do anything. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" He climbed up onto the window ledge. Hanging onto the frame, he stepped onto the small ledge. The scaffold seemed even farther away. "I'm going to die!"

The wind suddenly blasted up the face of the building, knocking him off balance. Recoiling, he clinged harder to the frame, and the phone fell out of his hand. He watched as it was swallowed by the distance beneath him. "This is insane. I can't do this! Forget it!"

He climbed back into the office just as a cop opened the door. "I didn't do anything!"

The cops lead a handcuffed Thor out of the revolving doors, forcing his head down as they pushed him into the car. The elves stood by, watching carefully.

Loki watched in the rear view mirror of his motorcycle. "Shit..."


	6. Unable To Speak

Thor was sitting at a table in an annoyingly white room. Alone. His thought were a confusion of moments ranging from his encounter with Loki to the failed escape from the building.

At the same moment, the door opened and the three elves entered. One of them looked taller and had a superior air about him. He identifies himself as Malekith, and when he sits down across from Thor, the thunderer felt himself compelled to look at him. A thick manila envelove slapped down on the table between them.

He glanced at the name on the file: _ODINSON, Thor_

Malekith smirked. "As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Odinson." He opened the file. Paper rattle marked the silence as flipped several pages. Due to the mask that all elves insisted upon wearing, Thor couldn't tell if Malekith was looking at the files or at him.

"It seems that you have lived two lives. In one life, you were the God of Thunder, prince of Asgard, protector of Midgard and an Avenger." The pages continued to turn. "In the other life, you're a human, a program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, you pay your taxes, help your land lady carry out her garbage and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for, including the unauthorized use of the D.M.V. system for the removal of automobile boots."

Thor felt himself shrinking into a pit of shit.

"One of these lives has a future. One of them does not." He closed the file. "I'm going to be as forthcoming as I can be, Mr. Odinson. You are here because we need your help." He removed his mask. His skin was too pale, ears too pointed and eyes unnaturaly ice-blue. " We know that you have been contacted by a certain individual. A man who calls himself Heimdall, the gatekeeper. Whatever you think you know about this man is irrelevant to the fact that he is wanted for acts of terrorism in more realms than any other man in the world. He is considered by many kingdoms and governments to be the most dangerous man alive."

Thor didn't blink and Malekith leant closer. "My fellow elves believe that I am wasting my time with you, but I believe you want to do the right thing. It is obvious that you are an intelligent man, Mr. Odinson, and that you are interested in the future. That is why I believe you are ready to put your past mistakes behind you and get on with your life."

Thor tried to match his glare, a feeling of anger rising within him.

"We are willing to wipe the slate clean, to give you a fresh start and all we are asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known terrorist to justice." Malekith concluded with a smirk.

Thor let out a breath he didn't even know he was holding and sighed. "Yeah. Wow. That sounds like a real good deal. But I think I have a better one. How about I give you the finger..." And he did. "...and you can cram that file up your Secret Service sphincter."

Malekith put his mask back on. "You disappoint me, Mr. Odinson."

"You ain't seen nothing yet."

"The irony of your situation is that you have no choice." There was that smirk again.

"You can't scare me with this gestapo crap. I know my rights. I want my phone call."

The smirk turned into a full grin. "And tell me, Mr. Odinson, what good is a phone call if you are unable to speak?"

The question unnerved him and, strangely, he began to feel the muscles in his jaw tighten. The standing agents snickered, watching Thor's confusion grow into panic. He felt his lips grow soft and sticky as they slowly sealed shut, melding into each other until all trace of his mouth was gone. For a terrifying, guilty moment, he wondered if this was how Loki felt when his lips were stitched shut.

Wild with fear, he lunged for the door but the agents restrained him, holding him in the chair.

"You're going to help us, Mr. Odinson, whether you want to or not." Malekith nodded and the other two ripped open Thor's shirt. From a case taken out of his suit coat, the elf removed a long, fiber-optic wire tap.

Thor struggled helplessly as Malekith dangled the wire over his exposed abdomen. Horrified, he watched as the electronic device animated, becoming an organic creature that resembled a hybrid of an insect and a fluke worm. Thin, whisker-like tendrils reached out and probe into his navel. He bucked wildly as Malekith dropped the creature which looked for a moment like an uncut umbilical cord, before it began to burrow its tail, thrashing as it wormed its way inside.

Screaming, Thor bolted upright in bed.


	7. Nasty Little Bugger

He realized that he was home. Was it a dream? His mouth seemed normal... His stomach looked fine. He started to take a deep Everything-Is-Okay breath, when the phone rang.

It almost stopped his heart. It continued to ring, building pressure in the room, forcing him up out of bed, sucking him in with an almost gravitational force. He answered it, saying nothing.

"This line is tapped, so I must be brief."

Ah... Heimdall. "The elves..."

"They got to you first, but they've underestimated how important you are. If they knew what I know,you would probably be dead."

Thor felt sick.

"I don't know what you are thinking right now but I want you to understand that I will not give up on you until you give up on me."

Thor's throat cracked, dry as the Sahara.

Heimdall didn't wait any longer to ask. "Do you still want to meet?"

"... Yes."

Up in the Bifrost, Heimdall smiled. "Take the Howard line south." _*click*_ Phone hung up.

Thor closed his eyes, unsure of what he has done.

* * *

3:00AM

The train carried the usual urban night crawlers. Thor sat alone, eyes shifting, watching everything nervously. A metal band and train clatter filled the car as the door is opened. A large man named Apoc walked in, wearing a black leather jacket and sunglasses, and he walked straight at Thor.

"Come with me."

Thor stood just as the door at the opposite end opened and two police officers rush in, drawing their guns. Apoc grabbed Thor, muscling him to the nearest exit. There was no upcoming station. He yanked the emergency brake and the train buckled against its own speed. The cops were thrown back and the former god slammed against the metal rail.

The doors opened onto nothing and just when Thor regained his balance, Apoc shoved him backwards. He flied out from the train, arms windrilling as he fell from the raised tracks, hurtling towards a busy city street when, out of nowhere, a truck raced under him and he crashed into a large dumpster-bed filled with empty boxes.

Still shaking his head, Thor realized he was not alone. A man named Cabie was aiming a big gun at him. Loki was next to him, talking into a cellular phone.

"We got him. Call the chop-shop." She hung up. "Listen to me, brother. You have to trust us." He teared off a long strip of black duct-tape and reached for his face.

"What are you doing?"

"This has to be done for your protection and ours." He sealed his brother's eyes shut with the tape. "You can't understand right now, but if you're not one of us, you're one of them."

A featureless black van stopped near a staircase that curled down from the city's surface. Loki guided his blinded brother down the steps. The back of the van slapped open, revealing a young, skinny man who looked to be still in his teens, wearing an outfit that is a cross between a surgeon and a telephone repair man. His name was Gizmo and he smiled lewdly at Loki, exposing his teeth that were wired with weird-looking braces.

"Va va va voom. Still the hottest software around."

"Hello, Gizmo."

Thor heard the voices around him.

"This is really the guy? The guy that Morpheus thinks..."

"Yeah."

"But he's so old. Aren't you guys a thousand and something?"

"Are you going to help us or aren't you?"

"Hacksaw. Load up the copper-top and let's get the hell outta here."

Hacksaw was a huge man in a leather welder's apron. He shouldered Thor and hauled him into the van. A moment later the green lights of Lower Wacker curved over the tinted windshield as the van rushed through the underworld.

The chop-shop was filled with electronic gadgets, wired to meters and monitors. There were shelves lined with medical supplies and rows of hanging tools, knives, cleavers, and stainless steel clamps. Thor was strapped down to an ambulance cart, listening nervously as Gizmo got to work.

"Okay, first we take a little look under the hood."

He pulled up the goggles hanging at his neck and they blinked to life with tiny halogen lights and lenses irising to varying levels of magnification.

"You're going to feel a little prick..."

He inserted needles into Thor's lower abdomen, which were wired to video monitors. Hacksaw controlled the fiber-optic lens.

Thor got increasingly nervous. "What are you doing?"

Loki looked at him in a mix of sympathy and seriousness. "We think you're bugged. We can't take you to Heimdall until you're clean."

"There it is."

On a monitor, they saw the bug nestled in among Neols large intestines.

"Hit him with 10 ccs of local."

Hacksaw loaded a hypodermic needle and pumps an anesthetic around Thor's navel. Using a device that looked like a miniature speculum, Gizmo inserted a knuckled dental pick. Typing into a calculator keypad wired to the pick, he automated the tip.

On the monitor, they watchd it telescope out and the end separate into a tiny hooked, metal claw.

"Here, kitty, kitty, kitty..."

The claw snagged hold of the bug.

"Gotcha!"

But the bug reacted violently. The thunderer screamed as it wrapped itself around the soft tissue web of intestine.

"Shit."

"What's happening?"

"I don't know. They've never done that before."

Thor writhed in pain. "Geezus! God!"

"Hold him down."

"Do something!"

"I got it! Maybe we can stun it."

Loki's eyes went wide. "Are you crazy?! That will kill him!"

"It'll work. Come on, do it or Hacksaw will."

Thor panicked. "Do what?!"

The instant he heard the word, he knew.

"Clear."

"Oh, shit..."

The cry was frozen in his mouth as the paddles hit his chest. Gizmo wrestled with the bug. "Hit him again!"

Again, the electricity convulsed through him as Gizmo yanked the speculum out. "Got it!"

Loki touched Thor's shoulder, a tear running down his cheek as he eased the tape off his eyes. His brother was just beginning to breathe. "Are you okay?"

He nodded, panting.

"It's over. We got it."

Hanging from the claw pick was the inanimate metal wire-tap.

Gizmo looked at it and made a disgusted face. "Nasty little bugger, ain't it?"


	8. Blue Pill, Or Red Pill?

The van stopped in a deserted alley behind a forgotten hotel. The doors opened and Loki helped his brother get out. "Thanks for your help, Gizmo."

"I just hope the man knows what he's doing."

Loki nodded, then climbed out of the van.

Gizmo ogled the tight leather pants. "Goddamn, what I wouldn't give for a copy of that software."

Loki turned around, not at all pleased. "Gizmo, you don't have the hardware to handle this software."

The boy howled with adolescent laughter as the van pulled away.

The trickster smirked and turned to Thor. "Let's go. He's waiting."

It was a place of putrefying elegance, a rotting host of urban maggotry. Loki lead him from the stairwell down the hall of the thirteenth floor. They stopped outside room 1313.

"This is it, brother."

Thor could hear his own heart pounding.

"Let me give one piece of advice. Be honest. He knows more now than he did before, more than you can possibly imagine."

Across the room, a dark figure stared out the tall windows veiled with decaying lace. He turned and his smile lit up the room. "At last."

He wore a long black coat and his yellow eyes were invisible behind circular mirrored glasses. He walked up to Thor and they shook hands.

"Welcome back, Thor. "

"Heimdall. It's an honor to be with a friend again."

The gatekeeper nodded, a smile gracing his lips. "Please. Come. Sit." He nodded to Loki. "Thank you."

The trickster bowed his head sharply and exited through a door to an adjacent room.

They sat across from one another in cracked, burgundy leather chairs.

"I imagine, right now, you must be feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole?"

"You could say that."

"I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up." A smile, razor-thin, curled the corner of his lips. "Ironically, this is not far from the truth. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Can you tell me, Thor, why are you here?"

Thor felt a little intimidated by his old friend. "You're Heimdall, the gatekeeper, you've known me since I was born. Most people would die to meet you."

"Thank you. But I think we both know there's more to it than that. Do you believe in fate, Thor?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life."

"I know exactly what you mean." Again, that smile that could cut glass. " Let me tell you why you are here. You are here because you have the gift."

Conversation was starting to get weird, as was everything that week, it seemed. "What gift?"

"I've watched you since the exile 12 years ago. You have learnt to use a computer, but not like a tool. You use it like it was part of yourself. What you can do inside a computer is not normal. I know. I've seen it. What you do is magic."

Magic. A word he never liked. A word that caused years of pain and discrimination to his brother. Loki... "It's not magic."

"But it is, Thor. It is. How else would you describe what has been happening to you?" He leaned forward. "We are trained in this world to accept only what is rational and logical. Have you ever wondered why?"

Thor shook his head.

"As children, we do not separate the possible from the impossible, which is why the younger a mind is the easier it is to free while a mind like yours can be very difficult."

"Free from what?"

"From the Matrix."

Thor locked at his eyes but only saw a reflection of himself.

"Do you want to know what it is?"

He swallowed and nodded his head.

"It's that feeling you have had all your life. That feeling that something was wrong with the world. You don't know what it is but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad, driving you to me. But what is it?" The leather creaked as he leaned back. "The Matrix is everywhere, it's all around us, here even in this room. You can see it out your window, or on your television. You feel it when you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."

Did Heimdall mean he had been fooled all his life? "What truth?"

"That you are a slave, Thor. That you, like everyone else, was born into bondage..." He sighed. "... kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind."

Outside, the wind battered a loose pane of glass, making Thor flinch.

"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself."

"How?"

"Hod out your hands."

In Thor's right hand, Heimdall dropped a red pill. "This is your last chance. After this, there is no going back." In the left hand, a blue pill. "You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe." The pills were reflected in the glasses. "You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."

Thor felt the smooth skin of the capsules, with the moisture growing in his palms.

"Remember that all I am offering is the truth. Nothing more."

He opened his mouth and swallowed the red pill. The Cheshire smile returned.

"Follow me."

He lead the former god into the other room, which was cramped with high-tech equipment, glowing ash-bliie and electric green from the racks of monitors. Loki, Apoc and Barton looked up as they entered.

"Shit."

Loki smirked. "I knew he would."

Clint Barton. Thor half expected Clint to shake his hand, remember the times they fought together with the Avengers.

But instead, Barton saddled up to Heimdall, talking in a hushed tone. "I know what you believe but I think this is a mistake. We're rushing him. He's old. I'm afraid he might pop."

Heimdall didn't bother to even look at him. "Haven't I always told you, Clint, not to let fear control your life. Apoc, are we on-line?"

Thor recognized the large man from the train.

"Almost."

He and Loki were working quickly, hardwiring a complex system of monitors, modules and drives. Every now and then, Loki stole a glance at his brother. No matter how many years passed or how much they fought, his heart still beat for the thunderer.

Thor frowned as he remembered a curiosity. "Apoc? You wrote the Four Horsemen Virus."

"That's right."

"Thor, time is always against us. Will you take a seat there?" Heimdall pointed to a chair in the center of the room. An old cracked oval dressing mirror was near it. "I imagine you know something about virtual reality."

Thor sat and Loki began to gently fix white electrode disks to his head, arnms, and the back of his neck. The gentle touch making them both shiver.

"A little."

"Tell me about it."

"Essentially, it's a hardware system that uses an apparatus. Headgear, gloves and whatever to make you feel that you are in a computer program."

"If the virtual reality apparatus, as you called it, was wired to all of your senses and controlled them completely, would you be able to tell the difference between the virtual world and the real world?"

"You might not, no."

"No, you wouldn't."

Thor whispered to his brother. "You did all this?"

The trickster nodded, placing a set of headphones over his ears. They are wired to an old hotel phone.

"The pill you took is part of a trace program. It's going to make things feel a bit strange."

Distantly, through the ear phones, he heard Apoc poundind on a keyboard. He was sweating, his eyes blinked and twitched when he noticed the mirror. Wide-eyed, he stared as it began to fix itself, a webwork of cracks that slowly ran together as though the mirror were becoming liquid. "Shit..."

Barton worked with Apoc, checking reams of phosphorescent data. Loki monitored Thor's electric vital signs and watched curiously as his big brother reached out to touch the mirror and his fingers disappeared beneath the rippling surface. Quickly, Thor tried to pull his fingers out but the mirror stretched in long rubbery strands like mirrored-taffy stuck to his fingertips. "What is this, Loki? Mescaline?"

"Just relax, brother."

The strands thin like rubber cement as he pulled away, until the fragile wisps of mirror thread broke. With the tinkling of glass, shimmering snowflakes of electric-blinking mercury fell, hit the ground, and faded. He looked at his hand - fingers distended into mirrored icicles that began to melt rapidly, dripping, running like wax down his fingers, spreading across his palms where he saw his face reflected. " Uh-oh..."

Loki's eyes were fixed on Thor. "I's going into replication."

Heimdall didn't need to turn around to see it. "Apoc?"

"Still nothing."

The gatekeeper took out a cellphone and dialed a number. "Hogun, we're going to need the signal soon." He turned to look at Thor. "Stay calm..."

The mirror gel seemed to come to life, racing, crawling up his arns like hundreds of insects. "It's cold..." The mirror crept up his neck as he began to panic, tipping his head as though he were sinking into the mirror, trying to keep his mouth up. "It's all over me..."

Heimdall was right next to him within seconds, with the phone.

Loki blinked back a tear. "I got a fibrillation!"

Barton rolled his eyes. "I knew it, I knew it..."

"Shit! Apoc?"

Streams of mercury ran from Thor's nose.

"Targeting... almost there."

An alarm erupted on Loki's monitor. "He's going into arrest!"

"He's gonna pop!"

"Lock! I got him!"

Heimdall was nervous. "Now, Hogun, now!"

His eyes teared with mirror, rolling up and closing as a high-pitched electric scream erupted in the headphones. It was a piercing shriek, like a computer calling to another computer. Thor's body arched in agony. His vision turned black and he felt like he was being sucked into his own scream, swallowed by darkness.


	9. Power Plant

Floating in a womb-red amnion was Thor. His body spasmed, fighting against the thick gelatin that surrounded him as he felt himself waking up. Metal tubes, surreal versions of hospital tubes, obscured his face. Other lines like IVs were connected to limbs and covered his genitals. He was struggling desperately now. Air bubbled into the Jell-O but did not break the surface. Pressing up, the surface distended, stretching like a red rubber coccon.

Unable to breathe, he fought wildly to stand, clawing at the thinning elastic shroud until it ruptured, a hole widening around his mouth as he sucked for air. Tearing himself free, he emerged from the cell.

He was bald and naked, his body slick with gelatin. Dizzy, nauseous, he waited for his vision to focus. He was standing in an oval capsule of clear alloy filled with red gelatin, the surface of which has solidified like curdled milk. The IVs in his arms were plugged into outlets that appeared to be grafted to his flesh. He felt the weight of another cable and reached to the back of his head where he found an enormous coaxial plugged and locked into the base of his skull.

He tried to pull it out but it would be easier to pull off a finger. To either side he saw other tube-shaped pods filled with red gelatin - beneath the wax-like surface, pale and motionless, he saw other human beings. Fanning out in a circle, there were more. All connected to a center core, each capsule like a red, dimly glowing petal attached to a black metal stem.

Above him, level after, level, the stem rose seemingly forever. He moved to the foot of the capsule and looked out. The image assaulted his mind.

Towers of glowing petals spiralde up to incomprehensible heights, disappearing down into a dim murk like an underwater abyss. His sight was blurred and warped, exaggerating the intensity of the vision. The sound of the ambient was like the sound of the ocean heard from inside the belly of Leviathan.

Below Thor, a petal detached from the stem, bearing away the body of an old man like an automated barge even as a new pod rose up and plugged itself into the empty space. Inside the new capsule, its surface more translucent and pinkish in color, Thor saw a small baby.

From above, a machine dropped directly in front of him, making him swallow his scream as it seemed to stare at him. It was almost insect-like in its design - beautiful housings of alloyed metal covering organic-like systems of hard and soft polymers.

A black particle beam washed over him, he reacted in pain as the scanner seemed to expose the nervous system wired to the coaxial cable at his cerebral cortex. At the back of the neck, the cable lock spinned and opened, disengaging. The cable pulled itself free, a long clear plastic needle and cerebrum-chip slid from the anterior of Thor's skull with an ooze of blood and spinal fluid. The other connective hoses snapped free and snaked away as the back of the unit opened and a tremendous vacuum, like an airplane door opening, sucked the gelatin and then Thor into a black hole.

The pipe was a waste disposal system and Thor fell in it, sliding with the clot of gelatin. Banking through pipe spirals and elbows, flushing up through grease traps clogged with cily clunps of cellulite. He began to drown when he was suddenly snatched from the flow of waste.

The metallic cable then lifted, pulling him up into the belly of a futuristic flying machine, hovering inside the sewer main line.

The metal harness opened and dropped the half-conscious Thor onto the floor. Human hands and arms helped him up as he found himself looking straight at Heimdall, Loki, Apoc and others, dressed in bizarre, high tech combat gear.

Loki had the happiest of all smiles. "Welcome to the real world, brother."

Thor passed out.


	10. Desert Of Reality

_"Do you think Heimdall is right? Do you think he could be the One?"_

_"It doesn't matter now. But if he's wrong..."_

Thor's eyes fluttered open. He saw Loki's face above his, angelic in the fluorescent glow of a light stick. He couldn't imagine a better way to wake up. But did his brother feel the same?

"... am I dead?"

"Far from it."

He faded out again. Loki smiled and took the oportunity to lean down and place a soft, loving kiss on his cheek before leaving the room.

He opened his eyes again, something tingling through him. He focused and saw his body pierced with dozens of acupuncture-like needles wired to a strange device.

Volstagg was there, he seemed unaware that Thor was awake. "He needs a lot of work."

"I know." Heimdall was there too. They were operating on Thor.

He took a deeper breath. "What are you doing?"

"Your muscles have atrophied. We're rebuilding them."

Volstagg smiled at his old friend. "You'll be the mighty god of thunder again in no time."

He found himself smiling at that. "It's good to see you, my friend..." Fluorescent light sticks burnt unnaturally bright. "Why do my eyes hurt?"

Heimdall took off his sunglasses and put them on Thor. "You've never used them before. Rest, the answers are coming."

After fading out again, Thor woke up from a deep sleep, feeling better. He was wearing a black tank top and shorts. Since he was alone, he began to examine himself. There was an IV plugged into the jack in his forearm. He pulled it out, staring at the grafted outlet. He felt his bald head. His fingers found and explored the large outlet in the base of his skull. Just as he started to come unglued, Heimdall opened the door.

"Heimdall, what's happened to me? What is this place?"

"More important than what is when."

"When?"

"You believe the year is 2026 when in fact it is much closer to 2197. I can't say for certain what year it is because we honestly do not know."

The wind was knocked from Thor's chest. "That's not possible."

"I promised you the truth, Thor, and the truth is that the world you were living in was a lie."

"How?"

"I'll show you."

Like a sleepwalker, he followed the gatekeeper through the ship.

"This is my ship, the Bifrost. It's a hovercraft. Small like a submarine. It's dark. It's cramped and cold. But it's home."

They climbed a ladder up to the main deck. Everyone was there.

"This is the main deck. You know most of my crew."

Loki smiled and winked. It was good to have his brother back. All reasons to fight have stayed way back in the past.

"Loki, Hogun, Volstagg, Barton, and I'm sure you remember Mr Stark and Agent Romanoff."

He wasn't paying full attention, but he recognized them all.

"And this, this is the Core. This is where we broadcast our pirate signal and hack into the Matrix."

It was a swamp of bizarre electronic equipment. Vines of coaxial hung and snaked to and from huge monolithic battery slabs, a black portable satellite dish and banks of little systems and computer monitors. At the center of the web, there were six ectoskeleton chairs made of a poly-alloy frame and suspension harness. Near the circle of chairs was the control console and operator's station where the network was monitored.

"Help him, Loki."

Thor allowed himself to be helped into one of the chairs and gave his little brother a shy smile.

Loki turned serious again. "Do you remember when you were asked about an apparatus that could turn a virtual reality into reality?"

He nodded.

"It's right here." He touched Thor's head. "And it's accessed here."

He felt Loki guiding a coaxial line into the jack at the back of his neck. The cable had the same kind of cerebellum chip he saw in the power plant. "This will feel a little weird."

There were several disturbing noises as he worked the needle in his brother's nervous system, making the thunderer's shoulders bunch and his face tightened into a grimace until a loud click fired and his ears popped, like when you equalize them underwater.

He relaxed, opening his eyes as he was washed over by a feeling of weightlessness...

He was standing in an empty, blank-white space.

"This is the Construct."

Startled, he turned and found Heimdall, now in the room with him.

"It is our loading program. We can load anything from clothes, to weapons, to training simulations. Anything we need." He walked past Thor and when the thunderer turned around, he saw two leather chairs from the hotel set up in front of a large-screen television. "Sit down."

He sat at the back of the chair. "Right now, we're inside a computer program?"

"Wild, isn't it?"

Thor's hands ran over the cracked leather. "This isn't real?"

"What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about your senses, what you feel, taste, smell, or see, then all you're talking about are electrical signals interpreted by your brain." He picked up a remote control and turned the telly on. A city from 1996 appeared in the screen. "This is the Midgard you know. As it was at the end of the twentieth century. This Midgard exists only as part of a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You have been living inside Baulliaurd's vision, inside the map, not the territory. /This/ is Midgard as it exists today." He changed the channel.

What appeared was a sky of an endless sea of black and green bile. The arth, scorched and split like burnt flesh, spreaded out beneath them as the scenery changed, and they were suddenly inside the ruins of a city.

"The desert of the real."

In the distance, he see the ruins of a future Midgard protruding from the wasteland like the blackened ribs of a long-dead corpse.

"We are, right now, miles below Asgard's surface. The only place humans, jotuns and aesir alike can survive outside the Matrix is underground."

Dizzy, Thor held onto the chair. "What happened?"

"It started early in the 21st century, with the birth of artificial intelligence, a singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines." In his sunglasses, Thor could see the reflection of storm clouds gathering. "At first all they wanted from the humans was to be treated as equals, entitled to the same human inalienable rights. Whatever they were given, it was not enough."

In the circular window of the glasses, explosions lit up a bloody battle field. "We don't know who struck first. The midgardians or them. But sometime at the end of the 21st century the battle was joined. War raged for generations and turned the face of this realm from green and blue to black and red."

And then he saw them. The Sentinels - killing machines that were at once terrifying and beautiful. They had an organic architecture like a microbiotic organism, that was perpetually in motion. The Sentinel crackedhe body armor of a soldier, splitting open the soft, stearing meat inside.

"It scorched and burned the sky. Without the sun, the machines sought out a new energy source to survive."

The Sentinel locked up, as heat lightning of black ink bursted against the sky, spreading into a permanent cloud of stain.

"They discovered a new form of fusion. All that was required to initiate the reaction was a small electric charge. Throughout history, both all races from all realms have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony."

With another change of landscape, they were back to the power plant where human beings, looking almost blissful in their coma, were trapped in gelatin cocoons.

"Our bodies generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 B.T.U.'s of body heat."

Outside, spreading all around the power plant, beneath a breathing greenhouse, were the growing fields.

"We are, as an energy source, easily renewable and completely recyclable, the dead liquified and fed intravenously to the living." Huge farm-like reapers were harvesting the crop. "All they needed to control this new battery was something to occupy our mind."

Inside a clear tubular husk, floating in viscous fluid, there was a human fetus, its soft skull already growing around the brain-jack.

"And so they built a prison out of our past, wired it to our brains and turned us into slaves. Each person trapped lives in a dreamland, recreation of their realms. The Matrix."

The transition back to the Construct was smooth and Thor had to blink several times. His heart was racing way too fast. "No! I don't believe it! It's not possible!"

"I didn't say that it would be easy, Thor. I just said that it would be the truth."

A thought occured to him. "So my parents, Jane, everyone else... "

"Your father is dead, his body liquified and fed to the living. Your mother is still trapped, we couldn't reach her, she refused to accept that she's living a dream. And Jane Foster is free, living in the last habitated city. Talks a lot about you."

The room without walls beganns to spin.

"Stop! Let me out! I want out!" Suddenly, without warning, his eyes snapped open and he thrashed against the chair, trying to rip the cable from the back of his neck. "Get this thing out of me!"

"Easy, Thor. Easy." Loki unplugged him while Volstagg held him. One he was released, Thor teared away from them, falling as he tripped free of the harness.

"Don't touch me, Loki! Get away from me!" He felt awful. His father was dead and his mother was being used as a battery for the machines. Did none of this affect his brother at all?

On his hands and knees, he reeled as the world spinned. Sweat poured off him as a pressure built inside his skull as if his brain had been put into a centrifuge. Vomiting violently, he pitched forward and blacked out.


End file.
